Material Poetics and the ‘Communication Event’

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Notes

1 This argument is taken from a larger project where I develop this theory and framework for the purposes of looking at Roni Horn's installation Pair Object III: For two rooms (1988), Emily Dickinson's later manuscript pages (1868–83, inclusive), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's video installation Passages Paysages (1978), Fiona Templeton's performance installation Cells of Release (1995) and Jenny Holzer's artists’ pages Lustmord (1993). With the theory and framework outlined here serving as a basis, I proceed to engage with each of these artworks through a method of creative critical writing based on the tenets of art-writing, site-writing and critical performance. See Kreider (2014).

2 I consider how artworks employing a verbal message are capable of contributing to contemporary ethicopolitical discourse in ‘Performing the line: Fiona Templeton's Cells of Release as political activism’ and ‘The material reach of the word: Jenny Holzer's Lustmord and the responsibility of art’, the final two chapters of Poetics and Place (Kreider 2014).

3 I consider this meaningful manipulation of an artwork's material aspects not only in terms of the sign but also in terms of site. Particularly in ‘Object, sign & (punctuating) space: An emergence of the indexical symbol through Roni Horn's Pair Object III: For Two Rooms’ and ‘The page as site: A creative and critical performance of Emily Dickinson's later manuscripts’, the first two chapters of Poetics and Place (Kreider 2014).

4 I look specifically at the implications of voice for an understanding of subjectivity in ‘Projecting the voice: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Passages Paysages’, the fourth chapter of Poetics and Place (Kreider 2014).

5 For further discussion and a full contextualization of this critical practice see the introduction to Poetics and Place (Kreider 2014).